Jesús Adrián Rodríguez Samaniego

Career Samaniego was a radio journalist for the Antena 102.5 FM, a local radio station owned by the GRD Multimedia, and former crime reporter for the newspaper El Heraldo de Chihuahua in Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico. For more than 15 years he collaborated with various local media, such as being a reporter for the police section of the newspaper El Heraldo de Chihuahua. Every Saturday he participated in the Reporters' Desk program at the station where he worked.

Death Jesus Adrian Rodriguez Samaniego was killed at point-blank range outside his home located in the Santa Rosa neighborhood of Chihuahua City at around 7:30 a.m. Samaniego was getting into his Tsuru model car to head to an event called, "Mesa de Reporteros," a weekly Saturday radio talk show. Two unknown men drove by and shot him at least 8 times with .45 caliber rounds. Samaniego was killed instantly on the scene. El Heraldo de Chihuahua reported that one possible motive for the murder may have been Rodríguez's investigation into the 2013 jailing of two brothers from the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa. As of December 2016, the men were held as suspects in a July 2009 attack on a government convoy that killed two policemen and an official of the federal Social Development Secretariat. In addition, since 2000, ARTICLE 19 has documented 100 homicides of journalists, of which 12 were registered in Chihuahua. It also requires the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and the state government of Chihuahua to implement all necessary measures to safeguard the life, liberty and integrity of the journalist's family and ensure the effectiveness of the early warning implemented by both Prevent attacks on journalists in the entity.

A representative of the Office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued the following statement: "This attack must be properly investigated, exhausting all lines of investigation, including those related to the journalistic activity of Mr. Rodriguez Samaniego. Not only those directly responsible for his homicide should be brought to justice, but also the intellectual authors, if any. No attack on the media or journalists should go unpunished."

"Reporters Without Borders expresses its shock at this new crime and offers its full support to the family of Adrián Rodríguez as well as his fellow journalists," says Emmanuel Colombié, head of RSF's Latin America Office. "Mexico has just experienced a dramatic year in terms of journalistic union security, it is time to establish reliable protection mechanisms in the most violent states of the country, where the press is systematically targeted when it is interested in corruption and organized crime."